Night in the Woods

This is a a 2D platformer, but it's got a strong story focus (a coming of age story) and most of the gameplay is walking around and talking to people. In addition, there are two major mini-games: playing music like in Rock Band, and a fairly simple, but extremely difficult old-school 2D isometric action platformer. I enjoyed the game enough to play through the whole story, but I can't say I loved it.

THE GOOD:

• The characters are interesting.
• The dialog is quite good.
• The story's themes are very topical and relevant to any ordinary working-age person alive nowadays.
• I like how areas changed subtly from day to day. There was always something different going on.
• I enjoyed the mini-games for the most part, although Demontower and the last song were both too hard for me.
• I enjoyed the art style.
• It's very woke (I like this, you may not).

THE BAD:

• The game is very slow. You walk slowly. You have to walk back and forth over the same areas over and over. The areas evolve a bit each day, so it's not as terrible as it might sound, but it's not that great either.
• The story touches on some really interesting themes, but I can't say it grabs them in any really compelling way. It merely nods to the themes. "These things are important," it says. But the story doesn't give any juicy insights or takeaways to think about.
• It's a coming of age story. There must be some people that believe these are High Art, but I'm not one of them.
• The pacing was off. The story evolves very, very, slowly. You have to wait a very long time to sate your curiosity about what happened a week before the start of the story, and then WHAM! the answer is more confusing than satisfactory, and the game ends. The ending is too rushed to have any good debate or answer to the story's themes.
• I found the overall plot to be kind of weird and not make a lot of sense... I thought for a long time that the story was surely about the main character's descent into schizophrenia. It isn't... and that is extra weird. Magic, psychic powers, angels, and demons, are an unsatisfying addition to a game that is set in an analogue of the real world.
• Late at night, in the dark, someone can't recognize you instantly (I'm talking to you, masked bad guy!).
• It doesn't make any sense that a secret cult of murderers can exist for a long time, in secret, in a small town.
• If a mine collapses, and a dozen people are killed, it will be noticed! It causes an earthquake, you know. And when a dozen members of a small town disappear overnight, the survivors will be freaking out the next day. It will not be a regular day in town.

THE UGLY:

• I did not encounter any bugs or crashes, which is a good thing.
• Depending on the exact moment you save your game and exit, you might have to re-play some of the story. However, this was never a major issue for me.